


Breathe

by somehowunbroken



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-14
Updated: 2010-09-14
Packaged: 2017-10-11 19:42:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/pseuds/somehowunbroken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started with a little cough. OC character death, swearing, illness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe

The alarms were, surprisingly, not the first clue that everything was about to be fucked sideways and upside-down.

No, John thought as he surveyed his surroundings, the first clue had been when Lieutenant Kasser had come back from P4J-062 coughing last week. Just an allergy attack, he’d assured John, and Carson hadn’t seen any reason to argue – no toxins in his bloodwork, and Kasser had a list of allergies to rival Rodney’s. It was possible – it was even likely – that Kasser’s coughing was due to some new pollen that would soon have the botanists squealing in joy.

But then Abrahams, the geologist on Kasser’s team, had started coughing, too. And then Lutz, and Oitirre, and then Kasser’s whole team was in the infirmary, coughing. That’s all it was, a dry, hacking cough, and though Carson saw no real need to do so, he kept them in for observation at John’s insistence.

They’d been allowed visitors, though, and then another geologist had stated coughing. Before long, it was the whole department; soon after, the other scientific disciplines began to fall ill, one after another. The military was far from immune; whole squadrons of Marines went down, whooping, gagging, gasping.

It was around the ninth day when John first felt the tickle in the back of his throat. By that time, Kasser was coughing up blood, and Carson’s eyes were bloodshot and haunted and grieving as he tended the young man. John could see in Carson’s expression that Kasser wasn’t going to make it unless there was some sort of miracle.

There wasn’t. Kasser was dead a few days later, less than two weeks after he’d returned to Atlantis with a little cough. It wasn’t the first death report John had sent back to the SGC, nor would it be the last, but it felt wrong, somehow, that Kasser had bee taken out by a nasty flu and not in a heroic defense of the City. John tacked a note to the end of the report. _Everyone’s sick. This is going to be bad, just so you know._

Everyone _was_ sick, or nearly; Rodney had locked himself in his room the second he’d even suspected something might be going on, and John had sent Teyla and Torren back to New Athos not long after. He’d checked in with them only that morning. They were fine, thank God. Ronon had stayed behind, claiming that it was probably something like Kirsen Fever again, that he was probably immune, and John kicked himself for not playing on Ronon’s guilt card and sending him through with Teyla as he watched his friend double over, gasping for air between coughs.

That was it, then. Teyla was safe, Torren was safe, and Rodney claimed to be fine, though he wouldn’t let anyone in to check. John had been okay, then a little sick; now, though, on the fourteenth day, he was coughing more than he was breathing normally, and Carson finally manhandled him into the infirmary.

“You need to lie down, Colonel,” he informed John, flicking his small flashlight back and forth across John’s eyes. John blinked and stood from the bed.

“Can’t,” he said. He was doing his best to search the database, to find the answer, because the Ancients had to know something about this, it had to be in there somewhere, he just had to keep looking… John shook his head. “I’ll be back if it gets worse,” he lied, and Carson nodded, too distracted to realize that John would rather die trying than quit while he could still fight.

He had to give up when, eighteen hours later, he started coughing up blood. It was just a little, not nearly as much as Kasser had been coughing up by the time he died, but it was enough to make him pause.

 _This is it_ , he thought with a calm finality. _I’ve done all I can, and now I’m going to die._

Predictably, that’s when the alarms started to blare.

John was the only one in the control room, and he glanced to the screen next to his to see the IDC blinking there. “SGC,” he breathed, then grimaced as the words tore another fit of coughing from him. He lowered the iris and pressed the communication button, meaning to welcome them through, but unable to get words out.

It didn’t matter, because there were soon figures in Hazmat suits striding confidently through the Gate, carrying bags and boxes and crates, the contents of which John couldn’t identify. He coughed loudly, doubling over and gasping, and felt the blood trickle down his chin. His vision swam before his eyes, and the last thing he saw before everything went dark was a hooded figure leaning over him, shouting to the others. “He’s alive!”

-0-

The world swam in and out of focus, and John thought fuzzily that it was like one of those games he’d played with as a kid, where a picture was split into pieces and jumbled, and you had to recreate it by sliding the bits around. Finally, everything clicked into place, and John blinked.

He reflexively took a deep breath, then winced, expecting the great hacking coughs to overtake him. They didn’t come, though, and John took another deep breath, and another. He could breathe.

“Hey,” he heard from his side. Rodney was sitting in the chair by his bed, datapad in his lap, one hand paused above the screen. “Welcome back.”

“What happened?”

“I happened,” Rodney said smugly. “Well, I had help, but still. I identified the pathogen that was killing you guys and sent the information back to Earth. It turns out that SG-1 ran into a similar bug a few years back, and they were able to whip up a batch of the medicine and get it through the Gate.”

“Huh,” John said, leaning back against the pillows. “So you were actually working in there.”

“Of course I was,” Rodney sniffed, then straightened indignantly. “What did you think I was doing?”

“Hiding,” John replied. “You gotta admit, Rodey, it was pretty likely.”

“Yes, well,” Rodney sniffed. “I saved your life. Maybe you could lay off the mocking for a bit.”

“I can probably handle that,” John agreed, closing his eyes again.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Rodney said a minute later, softly, as if he was sure John was already asleep and wouldn’t hear it.

“Me too,” john said quietly, and then he was.


End file.
